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Writer chides media for 'vamping' and public for 'hypocrisy' over 'Monica-gate'

Today's news culture -- as epitomized by network coverage of the sex scandal involving President Bill Clinton and White House intern Monica Lewinsky -- is plagued by addictive behavior that includes such "symptoms" as "binge coverage" and "premature adjudication," said New York Times columnist Frank Rich in an Oct. 15 lecture on campus.

In fact, talk show host Jerry Springer recently held a news conference to chastise the news media for emulating his controversy-catering show, noted Rich, and recent polls indicate that "in the public's view, the press is no different from Monica -- they're all tramps."

Nevertheless, contended Rich, both the media and the American public must share the blame for these "All Monica, All the Time" excesses.

Rich's talk, "Journalism in the Age of Monica," was sponsored by the Poynter Fellowship in Journalism, a campus lectureship program created through the generosity of the late newsman Nelson Poynter. Rich opened his remarks before a packed Yale University Art Gallery lecture hall by noting that Poynter "might be grateful not to be here to see what's become of journalism today."

Serious issues as soap opera. The current journalistic state of affairs can be traced back to the 1970s, said Rich, when "Roots" and other mini-series proved that "you could take serious issues such as slavery and turn them into soap operas." Later, the Gulf War, which Rich described as "the first completely televised soap-opera war," not only proved that news could be as riveting to audiences as a soap-opera, it helped launch a network: "CNN was watched by millions of people around the world," he noted.

Next came the murder case against O.J. Simpson, which was "fundamentally not a serious news story ... It was a celebrity murder trial," contended Rich. From the perspective of news operations, the story was also a "huge commercial success," he noted, and created an audience for yet another fledgling news network, Court TV.

Then came "'The Princess Diana Show' ... where there was actually no news after the initial event," said the columnist. "The amount of coverage the story generated had to be filled out by a journalistic 'Hamburger Helper,'" and set a precedent wherein serious news reporters began "stretching and vamping when there was no news," he said.

Profits and competition. All this occurred at a time when big corporations were taking over the major networks and insisting on profits from their news divisions, and a new crop of news services, such as MSNBC, began vying for a share of the television audience, noted Rich. "The emergence of these forces made Monica-gate an accident waiting to happen."

"Whatever one thinks about the scandal itself, for most of the public, it was about sex," said Rich, adding that, for many Americans, the media's coverage of the scandal was like a pornographic movie. "It was exciting for a while but, as watching porno movies can be, it became tedious after a while," noted the columnist, adding, "not that I've had the experience myself."

Although time has shown that most of the scoops reported about the White House scandal were accurate, "all sorts of standards have been thrown out the window" in the media's coverage of the story, said Rich. The press' "bias in favor of entertainment" inspired television news operations to replace their regular beat reporters with more "famous faces." As a result, he noted, the reporters who are covering the story are the same people offering commentary about the scandal on news talk shows.

Furthermore, the press has become "fundamentally disconnected from the American people," noted the columnist. Throughout the scandal, he pointed out, polls have shown that two-thirds of Americans are not in favor of Clinton being impeached or forced to resign. "This really confounded the media and led to a situation where the press started to turn on the public," said Rich, noting that one pundit recently described the public as an "unindicted co-conspirator" in the White House scandal. "The press seems to forget that most Americans' attitude toward sex isn't the same as that handed down by 'Father Knows Best,'" Rich added.

Polls vs. reality. At the same time, he said, the public has been demonstrating its own brand of "hypocrisy," with people telling pollsters that there's too much coverage of the scandal, while record numbers of them are tuning into TV shows on the topic or purchasing publications trumpeting the latest twists in the story.

The good news about the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal is "this story will end -- perhaps not in my lifetime," quipped Rich, "but certainly during the lifetime of a Yale undergraduate." He pointed out that the news media gave very little coverage to the recent news that O.J. Simpson's Brentwood mansion was being demolished, and said "Monica-gate," too, will pass: "We will forget," he promised.

One question, however, will remain, said Rich: "What happens with the culture that's left behind?" Journalism does need reforming, he noted, but these changes should be brought about not by the interference of government or other outside agencies, but through "self-policing and self-reflection."

"The public also has a role in this," Rich added. "If you want a better news media, you can vote for it. ... The truth is the more market-driven the news media is, the more power the consumer has."

He concluded: "One could argue that, this year, the culture got the news media it deserves."

-- By LuAnn Bishop